


hate the glitter (we have murdered the gleam)

by chemicalpixie



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, I Can Do What I Want So Glimmer's Gay Now, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Mentions of Forced Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 16:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11467623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicalpixie/pseuds/chemicalpixie
Summary: “beauty is a weapon. it is why she volunteers. she will get sponsors, or so they say. she does not know how much she will owe them when she wins the games. she does not want to know how she will pay them back.”or; glimmer, and the games.





	hate the glitter (we have murdered the gleam)

**Author's Note:**

> this was born because i really, really love glimmer. my headcanons for the careers are that glimmer's a lesbian and in love with clove and marina and that she's queerplatonic with the boys (and marvel, who is gay, is queerplatonic with the girls). i really, really, love glimmer and the careers, you guys. they're poor, tragic kids. also! marina's name is the name her actress gave her; i just stuck with it! and yes, peeta is there. but he doesn't really count as a career so i ignored him for the most part. sorry not sorry. please kudos and comment if you enjoyed!
> 
> the title of this fic is a slightly modified lyric from marina and the diamonds “troubled minds”, though the songs i listened to while writing this were lana del rey's “this is what makes us girls” and “god save the prom queen” by molly kate kestner, with a little bit of lorde's “glory and gore” in there for good measure.

glimmer has always been pretty. when she was a child, people would fawn over her. or so her mother says. she's not quite sure how much she trusts her mother, but her beauty hasn't changed, so she takes her word on this. beauty is a weapon. it is why she volunteers. she will get sponsors, or so they say. she does not know how much she will owe them when she wins the games. she does not want to know how she will pay them back ( ~~she knows. she has always known. she sees cashmere’s and finnick's eyes and she knows, she knows. she feels sorry for them. if she was them, she'd have hung herself long ago~~ ). 

glimmer has always been deadly. when she first stepped foot in the training center, they gave her a bow. she has never done well with a bow — well, that is not true. she is not best with a bow. she can hit a target, but a bow has never been her weapon. her weapon of choice is an mace ( ~~they picked their weapons together, her and marvel. they knew they'd be in the arena at the same time. he picked the projectile - glimmer thinks he has always been a little too uncomfortable with killing, not that she'd say. marvel and glimmer will take each other's secrets to the grave - and she chose the close-range. neither of them were prepared for the capital, where the girls are too pretty to use such an ugly weapon~~ ). when she reaches for the mace, prepared for the familiar weight of it in her hand, there are whispers, and her mentor tells her she is far too pretty to lose a limb or an eye. if she does, he says, there will be no more sponsors. ( ~~glimmer almost wishes she could lose a limb. they wouldn't want her then~~ ). she listens, picks up the bow. she wishes she had chosen a different weapon. they let clove keep her throwing knives ( ~~it is because they do not think clove is pretty. pretty is not her weapon. glimmer thinks clove is prettier than all of them combined, and throwing knives are delicate distance weapons~~ ). they let marina keep her trident. it is reminiscent of finnick's, and besides, it is not a close range weapon. finnick is her mentor, and it shows. marina aims better than anyone glimmer has ever seen. even finnick couldn't throw a trident at someone and hit them ( ~~he trapped them in nets and then impaled them. no one would tell him, but it was weak~~ ). marina can hit every training dummy and every hologram. glimmer has never seen her miss. she understands, now, why they chose her to be in the games. glimmer thinks if she does not win, it will be marina. ( ~~glimmer thinks that marina is prettiest when she is sweating, dark hair wild, and eyes wide at the training center. she thinks marina will be even prettier with glimmer's blood smeared across her fingers~~ ). 

glimmer has always been weak. after the gong rings, at the cornucopia, after the bloodbath, she picks the bow. not that it matters. she could have picked the mace ( ~~but glimmer cannot bear the loss of her pretty, pretty face. she is weak, and vain~~ ). marvel makes two kills in the bloodbath, cato another two, and clove three. glimmer stabs two people in the bloodbath, but it is not enough. one of those kills was in self-defense, and everyone knows such kills only count for half. ( ~~glimmer doesn't know their names. she does not want to, doesn't want to know. she is weak, after all, she might get attached. the idea of losing her fellow careers makes her weak. cato is sweet, and soft, though he doesn't look it, and he is only soft when they are alone. marvel is her best friend. clove is the prettiest and deadliest thing she has ever seen. marina is the the loveliest girl glimmer has ever met, not that she shows it. all marina shows is blood beneath pretty blue nail polish~~ ). glimmer kills at the cornucopia using a knife, the first weapon she’d been able to find, and when she scours it after, she can no longer find the mace. she curses herself, curses herself for being weak, for killing to defend herself, for not bothering first to find her mace and then paint a bloody swatch across the bloodbath, and knows that every moment she does not make another kill, her odds go down ( ~~she thinks of lunging across the fire they've made and strangling marvel, his eyes wide as blood from her nails runs in between her fingers and down his neck. _why?_ he'd ask. _i'm sorry_ , she'd say. she could kill clove easily, this she knows, but she cannot. clove makes glimmer weak in ways glimmer didn't know she could be weakened~~). they find the girl on fire ( ~~she has burns this time, isn't that funny? the girl on fire finally got burned~~ ). and glimmer wants to kill her, wants it so badly, wants her kills to mirror cato and clove who have already killed one, two, three, four. her odds go down every time their kill counts go up ( ~~for a moment, glimmer feels a flicker of something she's never felt before. she realizes she does not mind if she dies here. if she dies here, no one will want her. no one will want to fuck clove. the capital does not think of clove as a girl. they think of her as a knife in a human body. they would not want to fuck marina. they do not see marina as pretty enough. she is pretty, yes, but she is no glimmer. or finnick. or cashmere. or gloss. they wouldn't force clove or marina to spread their legs for the capital the way they would glimmer. she thinks dying might be better~~ ). glimmer can't hit the girl on fire with her bow ( ~~she thinks, if only she had her mace. the girl on fire's head would be crushed and bloody, blood in the tree bark and blood on her mace and blood on glimmer's hands and blood on the back of clove's neck when glimmer kisses her with blood-covered hands and blood on marina's hands while glimmer holds them tight in her own~~ ). they give up after a while, thinking the girl on fire will come down eventually. she has to, or she will starve. she is no girl from eleven, who they'd seen skitter around the ropes endlessly in training, and they make camp, make a fire and fall asleep, all within arm's reach of each other and their weapons. glimmer falls asleep lying on cato's arm ( ~~this is what she says when she means he is soft. he is gentle and careful and he loves her, she thinks, but he doesn't want to fuck her, for once, and she is grateful - here is a man other than marvel who doesn't want to put his hands up her shirt. it is not that he doesn't like women - she has seen him around clove, and clove around him - but it is that he understands her~~ ). her hand is clutched in marina's ( ~~she is the lifeline to marina's ocean~~ ). and marvel is farthest from her, across the fire, and clove lies near glimmer, not close enough, just _near_ , and glimmer thinks it is funny, really, how safe she feels with them here ( ~~she does not think about what will happen when the games are over. she does not think about how when she fucks the capital men, she will pretend it is marvel, or cato, neither of whom would ever want to hurt her. she does not think about how when the capital women croon over her and force her to kiss them, she will pretend it is clove or marina, who she already misses more than life, even though they lay beside her still~~ ). and glimmer dreams that night, dreams for the first night since the games started ( ~~she dreams of maces, and blood, and pretty girls and their lips~~ ).

glimmer has always been dead. it is when she is scrambling up, sleep fogging her senses as the tracker-jacker's stings blind her as she tries to run away and marvel is leaving her ( ~~he was the furthest from the nest. he should be safe. she comforts herself with this. maybe he will kill the girl on fire, spear her in the stomach as revenge for the death of his very best friend~~ ) and cato is leaving her ( ~~she hadn't even felt him rip his arm out from under her. she knows they were close to the nest's fall. she hopes he survives~~ ) and clove is leaving her ( ~~just not nearly as fast, and glimmer could swear clove looks back at her, swollen and bleeding, and glimmer wants to scream _no, no, don't look at me like this_. she has always been vain~~ ) and marina stumbles, stumbles like she's drunk off sweet capital wine ( ~~and glimmer wants nothing more for marina to come back, for them to lay dying, hand in hand, like lovers do~~ ) but marina collapses, and it is at this point that glimmer realizes she was born for this. she was born for her death, here, in the games. she was born so they could kill her. she was born to be a cold-blooded killer ( ~~if she'd taken her mace, she would have been. look at her - she still thinks of it as her mace when it has never been more clearly not hers~~ ). she has always been dead, from the moment she was born. she just didn't know it yet. and that is when cato and clove and marvel and marina come back to her, and they're all fine, and they're _laughing_ at her, and she wants to cry ( ~~she thought they would love her the way she loved them. forever and always. she'd forgotten the way love worked in the capital - it was borrowed and sold and traded, just like everything else~~ ). they reach down for her, and clove strokes glimmer's cheek with a knife, and glimmer hisses in agony. she'd never wanted the blood on their lips when they kissed to be _hers_. cato reaches for her mouth and glimmer tries to squirm away, but she can't, and he tears out her tongue, and glimmer screams, but there is blood coming down her throat, choking her. _that's for talking too much, bitch_ , he murmurs, and glimmer sobs, because cato wasn't the type to tell her to shut up. he loved listening to her, to her ideas and the sound of her voice, he'd told her as much, and glimmer wonders why he'd tell her such a lie only to hurt her now. and then marvel comes for her, swooping down at her like a bird, and pulls out her brains out from her ears. she isn't sure how he does it, only that it hurts more than anything else she's ever felt, and marvel looks down at her, face painted with pity; she'd never wanted him to _pity_ her. and then he whispers, _maybe you shouldn't have thought so much_ , he snaps, and glimmer wants to weep. he'd always said he liked her better when she wasn't sitting still, pretty like a doll for people to admire. other people liked her like that, but not marvel ( ~~never marvel~~ ). marina is next, and her dark hair tickles across glimmer's throat as she leans down, holding one of clove's knives in her hands. she uses it to cut glimmer's hands off, and then, laughing, adds, _you hold on to too much. that's a character flaw_. and then it is clove's turn, blessed clove, and clove reaches down into glimmer's chest and pulls her heart out of her ribcage. she examines it, throws it aside and then leans down to glimmer's ear and whispers ( ~~so close glimmer can feel her warm breath~~ ) _that's for loving me, you vain bitch_. and the pain is more than glimmer has ever felt and then she realizes, laughs a little, that _they will never want her now_. she is no longer pretty. didn't she always want it to end this way? ( ~~she did, and she's glad~~ ). 

glimmer has always been pretty. glimmer has always been deadly. glimmer has always been vain. glimmer has always been weak. glimmer has always been ugly. glimmer has always been dead.


End file.
